17 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

Similarly, playing against someone who has clearly lost control of the game for whatever reason - whether luck, a mistake, or simply having the wrong plan - but insists on dragging it out by running around the board for 20 minutes is incredibly frustrating to play against, and can honestly mentally have an impact on that person, which is in turn a detrimental thing to put someone through in a tournament unnecessarily and - shocker - therefore somewhat unsporting.

Why do you assume this would be the intention, rather then honestly trying your best to actually win via positioning, attacking, and hoping the dice favor you? Because when I realize I'm unlikely to win, I don't start to try stalling the match as long as possible. I try to win . Against all odds, knowing it's unlikely to work, I try to actually win rather then stall. If it works, great. If it doesn't, it was a fun match (hopefully).

21 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

Here's the thing. You've literally been playing this game for a week. This is, for the most part, a bloody friendly and helpful community, but posts criticising conceding a very well played world championship game in a massively disadvantageous position are not going to be welcome, or well received. Those posts coming from a background of zero experience, even less so. Concession wasn't something he had to do, but you won't find anyone else in the forum that wouldn't back him on the decision, wish him congrats on a great game, and agree that they'd have done the same.

And here's another thing. I've played X-Wing for just under a week, true. It'll be a week exactly on Tuesday. I've played various miniature war games since the early 90's. I started with Battletech. When it came out I heavily opted into Mage Knight and it's spin-off Mage Knight Dungeons. When it was released I then got into Hero Clix, which later lead into Warhammer 40k, Mordhiem, and Blood Bowl. I've played various CCG since the mid 90's or so. These include Netrunner, Magic: The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings, Highlander, and yes even Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. More recently I've gotten into the Transformers CCG. I've played Magic, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh both casually and in local tournaments. While my area has never had any tourneys for any miniature war games, the scene here was quite active up through 2006 before dying off due to the store owner passively discouraging all business. Since the store's gotten a new owner, it's once again become a hot spot for CCGs and miniature war games. This afternoon I was out there and got into a couple casual matches of X-Wing. While I was there I also saw one match of Star Wars: Legion (which I'm considering getting into). There were also 3 different Warhammer 40k matches going on, with a couple Warhammer Fantasy matches being played after those. There was a Magic: The Gathering tournament going on in the store at the same time, as well as a couple fighting game tourneys. But I didn't pay any attention to those or the Magic tourney. Those weren't why I was at the store.

I may be new to X-Wing it's self. But I am not new to miniature war games. Nor am I a stranger to tournament settings. There's no local miniature tourneys, at least none I can get to. But that doesn't mean I am inexperienced in how such communities work or what good sportsmanship is. Assuming I am, well, I'm sure you know the saying regarding that. My views only affect my own actions. I'll explain them if given the chance, and I've met many who share my views. I've met many who don't as well. What I don't do is try forcing anyone else to abide by my stance on conceding.

By the way, I'd consider someone spending 20 minutes running delaying tactics just because they realized they're probably going to lose to be rather unsporting too.

Again, new to X-Wing does not mean new to the entire hobby. Just that I'm new to this specific game and am still learning it. With each match I play, I get a little better. I'm still flying the Falcon off the map on occasion, but the last couple times it happened it was because I accidentally picked a 4 Strait maneuver instead of the Turn I was planning on doing. You know, instead of misjudging distances and doing a 3 Bank when a 1 or 2 Turn would have been what's needed to avoid the edge.

Some of you have conflated the original poster with Faerie.

They're not the same, even though both their handles start with F.

OP was aghast at the whole idea of conceding; Faerie just says he wouldn't do so himself.

1 hour ago, NakedDex said:

I'll be honest, that high-horse attitude to conceding is one of the reasons I gave up the OP scene for Armada...

Before I start this, I just want to stress that I agree with your overall point.

However , in defence of the Armada players, for a time (an unacceptably long time, but FFG seems to move at a glacial pace for everything with that game) conceding was actually implemented in such a way that doing it would completely warp events. Because it automatically awarded the maximum possible victory to the opponent, it often gave that player such an advantage that it was impossible for the rest of the event to catch up. It actually determined the winner of a Regional I attended once. It's since been fixed, of course, but before it was there were actually very good reasons for Armada players to actively discourage conceding.

6 hours ago, Faerie1979 said:

He could have pulled from behind. Although it was probably unlikely and would require exceptional luck. The safe thing to do is say "Okay, yeah, you're going to win anyway." In my personal opinion the right thing to do is to try. But that's just my opinion. It has no bearing on anything other then my personal choices.

NO he could not. He would never have shots on the opponent's ships. If he cannot shoot them he cannot kill them.

There is NO luck involved at all. His opponent was clearly good enough (being World Champion and all) to move his ships (which move after the z-95) and use the boost or barrel rolls to ensure no shots would come their way.

2 hours ago, Kristofer_Bengtsson said:

NO he could not. He would never have shots on the opponent's ships. If he cannot shoot them he cannot kill them.

There is NO luck involved at all. His opponent was clearly good enough (being World Champion and all) to move his ships (which move after the z-95) and use the boost or barrel rolls to ensure no shots would come their way.

Well that and the evade action basically makes any lucky shot completely worthless

OP just hasn't played enough to appreciate how there simply is no coming back from that game state, though anyone should be able to tell that the game was unwinnable simply by knowing what the evade action does

So, the game was unwinnable even from a dice perspective!

Y'all know that the runner up, Dan Taylor, played 20 games of X-wing that weekend right?? He as a System Open champ and played in Coruscant Wednesday, 7 games on Day 1, and then another 7 games of single elimination on Day 2 and the OP has the balls to suggest he should grind out 20 more minutes in a hopeless situation. Get out of here with that arm chair quarterback nonsense.

8 hours ago, DR4CO said:

Before I start this, I just want to stress that I agree with your overall point.

However , in defence of the Armada players, for a time (an unacceptably long time, but FFG seems to move at a glacial pace for everything with that game) conceding was actually implemented in such a way that doing it would completely warp events. Because it automatically awarded the maximum possible victory to the opponent, it often gave that player such an advantage that it was impossible for the rest of the event to catch up. It actually determined the winner of a Regional I attended once. It's since been fixed, of course, but before it was there were actually very good reasons for Armada players to actively discourage conceding.

Agreed, but in both cases I was conceding with nothing but limping Gozanti's on the board against sizable Rebel forces. In the first instance, a mostly still intact bomber squadron build with a pair of transports and an MC80 still up and supporting them, and in the other, a pair of hammerheads and MC30s, damaged but still fully offensively capable. My single blue dice attacks literally weren't going to even change the result if they all went well, nevermind if they were casually dismissed to shields. Another two turns would have yielded my destruction anyway, and quite frankly, the folks I was play against that day were a bit too try-hard for my scene.

8 hours ago, Gilarius said:

Some of you have conflated the original poster with Faerie.

They're not the same, even though both their handles start with F.

OP was aghast at the whole idea of conceding; Faerie just says he wouldn't do so himself.

I didn't mention names at all. Just a general thought on the topic and the conversation from my own experience.

9 hours ago, Faerie1979 said:

Why do you assume this would be the intention, rather then honestly trying your best to actually win via positioning, attacking, and hoping the dice favor you? Because when I realize I'm unlikely to win, I don't start to try stalling the match as long as possible. I try to win . Against all odds, knowing it's unlikely to work, I try to actually win rather then stall. If it works, great. If it doesn't, it was a fun match (hopefully).

And here's another thing. I've played X-Wing for just under a week, true. It'll be a week exactly on Tuesday. I've played various miniature war games since the early 90's. I started with Battletech. When it came out I heavily opted into Mage Knight and it's spin-off Mage Knight Dungeons. When it was released I then got into Hero Clix, which later lead into Warhammer 40k, Mordhiem, and Blood Bowl. I've played various CCG since the mid 90's or so. These include Netrunner, Magic: The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings, Highlander, and yes even Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. More recently I've gotten into the Transformers CCG. I've played Magic, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh both casually and in local tournaments. While my area has never had any tourneys for any miniature war games, the scene here was quite active up through 2006 before dying off due to the store owner passively discouraging all business. Since the store's gotten a new owner, it's once again become a hot spot for CCGs and miniature war games. This afternoon I was out there and got into a couple casual matches of X-Wing. While I was there I also saw one match of Star Wars: Legion (which I'm considering getting into). There were also 3 different Warhammer 40k matches going on, with a couple Warhammer Fantasy matches being played after those. There was a Magic: The Gathering tournament going on in the store at the same time, as well as a couple fighting game tourneys. But I didn't pay any attention to those or the Magic tourney. Those weren't why I was at the store.

I may be new to X-Wing it's self. But I am not new to miniature war games. Nor am I a stranger to tournament settings. There's no local miniature tourneys, at least none I can get to. But that doesn't mean I am inexperienced in how such communities work or what good sportsmanship is. Assuming I am, well, I'm sure you know the saying regarding that. My views only affect my own actions. I'll explain them if given the chance, and I've met many who share my views. I've met many who don't as well. What I don't do is try forcing anyone else to abide by my stance on conceding.

By the way, I'd consider someone spending 20 minutes running delaying tactics just because they realized they're probably going to lose to be rather unsporting too.

Again, new to X-Wing does not mean new to the entire hobby. Just that I'm new to this specific game and am still learning it. With each match I play, I get a little better. I'm still flying the Falcon off the map on occasion, but the last couple times it happened it was because I accidentally picked a 4 Strait maneuver instead of the Turn I was planning on doing. You know, instead of misjudging distances and doing a 3 Bank when a 1 or 2 Turn would have been what's needed to avoid the edge.

Congrats on playing games for as long as *checks notes* most of the people here. That doesn't have any bearing on the idea that someone should be considered unsporting for conceding a game. It doesn't matter what the game is.

This isn't the Kobiyashi Maru, and nobody here is Kirk. There are unwinnable scenarios. The end of a two day tournament event is not the time either player wants to draw out an inevitable conclusion to test a theory.

Run a single Z95 vs a Whisper/Grand Inquisitor list a hundred times and see what the percentage win rate is. A 2 dice attack ship vs a pair of high initiative, high agility, repositionable ships with both force and action based dice mods.

Man, every now and then I miss playing tournament level xwing, and then I'm reminded why I stopped. Hot ****...

2 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

Man, every now and then I miss playing tournament level xwing, and then I'm reminded why I stopped. Hot ****...

this thread is not a representative sample of players of high level tournament xwing

I would've flown off the table in a dramatic fashion... you know, for the stream.

I read this as "Qui l ting at the the final table" and was way more amused before I looked at the thread.

9 hours ago, Faerie1979 said:

Why do you assume this would be the intention, rather then honestly trying your best to actually win via positioning, attacking, and hoping the dice favor you? Because when I realize I'm unlikely to win, I don't start to try stalling the match as long as possible. I try to win . Against all odds, knowing it's unlikely to work, I try to actually win rather then stall. If it works, great. If it doesn't, it was a fun match (hopefully).

Your error here is thinking that the Rebel player could possibly win from that position with effort+luck. This shows your inexperience with X-Wing - there's nothing wrong with that (we all had to start somewhere) but it's leading you to error nonetheless.

The Imperial ships remaining had sufficient arc-dodging capability to ensure that a single low-mobility lower-initiative ship wouldn't get to roll attack dice at all. Only a mistake by Oliver would've let that happen, and even then, it would've had to happen multiple times for there to be anything but a 0% chance of Rebel victory. Which is a key point here - no amount of effort or luck or skill could've enabled a Rebel win by the point of the concession; only a string of Imperial blunders could've done that, and that just wasn't going to happen at that level of play.

30 minutes ago, svelok said:

this thread is not a representative sample of players of high level tournament xwing

This forum as a whole isn't. I mean to say the competitive end of xwing is something I left for attitudes like these. They're generally few and far between, but they spoiled a lot of otherwise great experiences.

Pretty disappointing to see this on the front page the day after Worlds. X-Wing community should be better than this.

1 minute ago, Tvboy said:

Pretty disappointing to see this on the front page the day after Worlds. X-Wing community should be better than this.

The community is better than this, the OP is just sadly mistaken. No one in attendance batted an eye at the concession, it was the natural end to that game.

X-Wing has numerous factors that make it unlike the other games you mentioned.

40k, especially 8th edition, is dice dependent in a way X-Wing is not. The way firing arcs and hit/wound rolls work means that yes, a squad of imperial guard can kill an Imperial Knight or a Daemon Primarch. It is exceedingly unlikely, but it’s possible. Accepted formats like ITC also push towards scenarios where playing to the last second makes sense.

Warmachine, Heroclix, other games you mentioned are similar. There’s usually something you can do for a Hail Mary.

X-Wing is not like that. Sure, if you can get a shot on target, you can maybe push a damage through. However, 90% of X-Wing is lining up your shot in the first place or making sure the enemy can’t line up theirs. The other 10% is making sure you have mods to use once you line it up. Especially considering the ships involved at the end and the level of skill exhibited by the players (or anyone making the top tables at Worlds), it was never going to happen.

In this situation, the mechanics of X-Wing dump all over the idea of “with luck I can kill a ship or win.” The Z moves first, allowing the Imperial ships to decide what action to take after they have moved and seen the board state. They can evade, keeping the enemy locked to doing 1 damage (heck, Whisper will have an evade already). You can barrel roll out of arc completely. You can focus if you have a shot and the enemy doesn’t.

The Z has no tricks up its sleeve. It’s purpose in this list appears to be an extra body and a blocker, to leave an enemy ship out to dry for the rest of the list to chew up. Unfortunately, there is no “rest of the list” anymore. No point in blocking, no way to catch the enemy, two high firepower ships that can easily blow you to pieces on your own, and not enough red dice to power through tokens?

Conceding is by far the most obvious choice to make here.

33 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Pretty disappointing to see this on the front page the day after Worlds. X-Wing community should be better than this.

Between this and many other topics on this board that i see started semi regularly

I'd say the x wing community is exactly this. Most never post, lots are fine and others do nothing but complain.

I feel like Rod Stewart sang a song that related to this very topic

Don't judge a book by its forums. The internet was a mistake.

Does anyone else think that when your whole squad is wiped it is unsporting for the player not to go down with the last ship?

You can concede whenever you want, it is not unsportsmanlike at all. It is a viable action by either player, and in this case it was clearly the right move to do rather than waste time on a "miracle" that was extremely statistically unlikely to occur.

41 minutes ago, FatherTurin said:

X-Wing has numerous factors that make it unlike the other games you mentioned.

40k, especially 8th edition, is dice dependent in a way X-Wing is not. The way firing arcs and hit/wound rolls work means that yes, a squad of imperial guard can kill an Imperial Knight or a Daemon Primarch. It is exceedingly unlikely, but it’s possible. Accepted formats like ITC also push towards scenarios where playing to the last second makes sense.

Warmachine, Heroclix, other games you mentioned are similar. There’s usually something you can do for a Hail Mary.

X-Wing is not like that. Sure, if you can get a shot on target, you can maybe push a damage through. However, 90% of X-Wing is lining up your shot in the first place or making sure the enemy can’t line up theirs. The other 10% is making sure you have mods to use once you line it up. Especially considering the ships involved at the end and the level of skill exhibited by the players (or anyone making the top tables at Worlds), it was never going to happen.

In this situation, the mechanics of X-Wing dump all over the idea of “with luck I can kill a ship or win.” The Z moves first, allowing the Imperial ships to decide what action to take after they have moved and seen the board state. They can evade, keeping the enemy locked to doing 1 damage (heck, Whisper will have an evade already). You can barrel roll out of arc completely. You can focus if you have a shot and the enemy doesn’t.

The Z has no tricks up its sleeve. It’s purpose in this list appears to be an extra body and a blocker, to leave an enemy ship out to dry for the rest of the list to chew up. Unfortunately, there is no “rest of the list” anymore. No point in blocking, no way to catch the enemy, two high firepower ships that can easily blow you to pieces on your own, and not enough red dice to power through tokens?

Conceding is by far the most obvious choice to make here.

Totally agreed.

The proof of that is the victory of Oli. The 4 forward from Whisper (IMO the game winner move) to get behind the rebel ships and get a range 1 attack on blount wihtout being targeted by himself was a purely perfect maneuver. I once did a similar thing by sending Lulo in a middle of a pack of 4 X Wings, getting the sweet spot calculated by millimeteres. Oli did it by decloaking at the same time. All the credit to him.

And NO WAY a Z can kill inquisitor AND Whisper. All the rebel squad managed to get 3 hits on inquis for 100 minutes, you really think that a init 1 Z-95 can finish off inquis before being totally obliterated by a TL/focus whisper attack ?

2 hours ago, svelok said:

this thread is not a representative sample of players of high level tournament xwing

it's the difference between reading the fly better thread about my troll vs the in person reactions i got.

2 hours ago, executor said:

Between this and many other topics on this board that i see started semi regularly

I'd say the x wing community is exactly this. Most never post, lots are fine and others do nothing but complain.

I feel like Rod Stewart sang a song that related to this very topic

Quick question. Is the final game also 75 minutes timed ?

1 minute ago, Blail Blerg said:

Quick question. Is the final game also 75 minutes timed ?

2hrs

5 hours ago, NervousSam said:

Don't judge a book by its forums. The internet was a mistake.